Child abuse awareness topic of Rotary Club’s guest speakers

Thursday

Apr 11, 2013 at 12:47 PMApr 11, 2013 at 12:52 PM

Cynthia Grau

Three guests at Tuesday’s Pontiac Rotary Club meeting made members aware of child abuse through a video during a presentation. April is Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month and Jo Sipes, multi-county coordinator for the Children’s Advocacy Center, Jake Walters, family and child advocate for the Children’s Advocacy Center, and Pontiac Police Detective Nick Taylor discussed different aspects of child physical and sexual abuse. Children’s Advocacy Center, with a satellite office in Livingston County, is a not-for-profit organization, although they are employed through McLean County government. “We are an investigative coordination agency that primarily works with the Department of Children and Family Services and law enforcement or investigations when there are allegations of child sexual or physical abuse,” Walters explained. “We do some interviewing for kids between the ages of 3 and 17. When allegations are made, other agencies involved will contact us and those interviews are done in our office.” A video, which was made for training purposes, was shown to the audience. An interview with an actual convicted sexual predator was included. The interview took place over the course of eight hours and the predator explained his methods of finding children and how he coerced them into acts of molestation. He also was able to tell people what to look for in case they’re worried that a child is being molested and how to protect children from becoming victims. The unidentified male said he used his wife’s job as a cleaning lady to find victims. He said he offended many times and that being a pedophile, which is a mental illness, caused him to continue hurting children. “While I was offending, some of my thoughts were, ‘They’re not going to get hurt,’” he said. “I’m not going to do anything that will cause them discomfort. I rationalized it by saying that I wasn’t going to do this, this and this.” He said he used different techniques to lure the children, including giving younger ones toys or candy, or tempting teenagers with alcohol. “I tried to play the good guy,” he said. “I paid them off. I gave them toys or something. It was always something. It was something you’d give to a child to make them feel like they owed you something.” He said parents and guardians have to be vigilant, checking Facebook and Twitter accounts because, he said, “There are people out there that are preying on your children. “The biggest thing, too,” he added, “is that I would say about 99 percent of the children that bring it up are telling the truth. It’s not something you just sit there and talk about. “If something happens that makes you feel uncomfortable, you need to tell, tell, tell. Tell your parents, tell your teacher or your pastor,” he said. Statistics were provided at the end of the video. These included only 30 percent of child abuse cases will result in official reports. Also, one in every five children is sexually solicited while online. The video pointed out that national statistics indicate one in every four girls and one in every six boys will be abused before their 18th birthday. Taylor gave a rundown of what happens after an incident of physical or sexual abuse is reported. He said that police work hand-in-hand with the Child Protection Network, the state’s attorney’s office and DCFS. He said that the initial investigation comes through law enforcement or DCFS and once a claim is validated, it is turned over to CPN to schedule interviews with the victims. “I will not talk to the kids except for the purpose of gathering enough information to start the investigation,” Taylor said. “Law enforcement can typically be pretty abrasive. Jo is much nicer and kinder and gentler. “After they come in, Jo talks to them and she makes sure they know it’s not their fault. They’re not in trouble. So many times these kids think they’re in trouble and that they’ve done something wrong,” Taylor said. If there is enough information gathered during the interview to start a criminal case, the state’s attorney will see if there is enough evidence to prosecute, Taylor noted. At that time, he said DCFS steps in to protect the children and the home. “The important thing is what’s good for the children. After that, we go in our own directions,” Taylor said. “DCFS will work on the welfare of the children and the home. We get search warrants and get face to face with them. “I get whatever information I can get from them. I get search warrants. I do the dirty job,” Taylor said. “After that, we come back together and we talk about the case. This is a very important part to bring the team back together. Jo and Jake are very good at making sure we do what we need to do to protect the children.” Sipes said that the interviewers that work with CPN go through intensive training and only trained forensic interviewers are allowed to conduct interviews in any of its offices state and nationwide. “There is a particular protocol and approach that we use to interview. It’s a non-leading, non-suggestive approach, because law enforcement has a different burden of proof than DCFS and prosecutors have a different burden of proof in order to prosecute someone and get a conviction,” she explained. “What we need to do is make sure we’re taking all of those into account in trying to get as much information as accurately and as reliable as possible the first time around so that all of those different entities can do their job with the same information. That promotes consistency across the case and it also allows us to forward all of that information to the state’s attorney’s office, and, hopefully, in cases where prosecution is needed, it can get done properly.” The Children’s Advocacy Center serves McLean, Livingston and DeWitt counties, with its main office at 200 W. Front St., 5th Floor, in Bloomington. Its Pontiac location is 202 1/2 N. Main St., above the Caring Pregnancy Center.

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